Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Werefox
Label: god bless this mess records
Release: 2013
Running time: 56:43
Rating: 5/5
There’s been a ton said and written about the Prekmurje alliance of musical rebels, and for good reason. Slovenia’s usual envious, oppositional mindset has every musician standing practically alone in their own trench, gleefully watching their rivals fail and fold, but in the lands beyond the Mura, collaboration is by far the more natural way of doing things. This band is proof of that recipe. It rose from the ashes of Psycho-Path and Sphericube, with building blocks borrowed from Bekko, Manul and Lollobrigida, and instead of a predictable continuation of stories already told, this time something new, fresh and exciting is pouring into your ears! Werefox are a band built for quality musical fun, and this time a much less melancholic dose of rage is even tonally lovable and ear-friendly from start to finish. That’s the mindset I took with me into the fox-furred debut I Am Memory a while ago, and the record set its own standards from the moment it came out and developed new yardsticks for measuring the quality of homegrown music from here on.
Werefox is a Ljubljana-based alliance of dreamers from Lendava and Murska Sobota. The creative core of this exegesis of alternative-tinged pop, or less weighed-down rock exorcism, is woven around the charismatic singer of Psycho-Path, Melee, always laced with strands of words. Standing beside the red-haired orator this time are an old acquaintance from Bekko, Manul and Psycho-Path, the gifted guitarist Sašo Benko aka Bekko, and a bass-and-drums rhythm duo made up of two familiar faces from Sphericube – drummer David Halb and bassist Manuel Hahn. So let’s get to the heart of it all – the music itself. After the very first press of the launch button into a sonic world of otherness, it’s clear that the formula for eclectic disconnection is far more positive this time than what you might be used to from what we could call the original sins of the Werefox players.
The Redneck Genious Story throws down the gauntlet to every alternative purist for whom melody is a crime. Werefox, in a manner I picked up long ago from Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam and similar giants of alternative-tinged rock, offer their own take on a story by the provocative American writer Harry Crews. The original tale, about an oddball who decides to eat his own car, serves Werefox as a podium for building their own story about a contagious hunger for more, for being different, for out-of-the-ordinary fun. The combination of music is seemingly simple. Guitars dominate, painting the atmosphere with riffs. Then, alongside Melanija’s vocals, there are backing vocals woven in, while bombastic bass and perfectly pumped-up drums playfully penetrate out of the pores of verses and chorus. Melee tells her story about the bloodthirstiness of time and forgetting, while memory this time rests on a single event, which the red-necked oddball puts on display. Werefox open up all their registers and seemingly lay bare their whole soul, and what follows right after is proof that this band’s bag holds even more greatness. A Shitload Of Love is a song about the renunciation that obsessive love can demand. Putting beloved dark princesses on the bright pedestal of otherworldly importance is this time laced with the imagery of Alice in Wonderland, and Werefox stay confidently devoted to their pop-flavored recipes. With music that gravitates squarely toward the alternative sources of wonderful music, they weave their sonic trail in the manner of the big names of the early nineties, but in a new-millennium way. If Billy Corgan once believed in the principles of analog beauty, then in his artistic rush to break away from that primordial nucleus he amputated it with digital crutches. Werefox stay far more old-school in their musical stance. They don’t recreate or butcher the analog sound, steeped in the smell of glowing tubes, the physical contact of fingers on strings, and sticks hitting drum heads and brass cymbals, with needless electro junk. There’s no pretense here, and every single riff works as if the band’s life were on the line at every moment. No filler, and the band’s story only keeps building and getting better!
Doghouse, after a bass-and-drums intro, settles into a suspended, mischievous guitar minimalism. Against the tale of lies, betrayal and a ruined, humiliated, exploited love, Werefox line up a series of dance-flavored riffs, and you can dance to the beat of the verse and the riffs too. The symptoms are clear: plenty of sunbeams in the sound thread themselves into darker lyrics, and the aim of the enlightenment this time is a sensual disconnect and at least one or two turns in the right direction toward a shamanic fusion with the foundation of the universe. Fun On The Moon is one of the record’s loveliest moments, and as someone in love with the cosmic shades of the supralunar world, I can’t ignore the fact that Werefox have managed to create one of the best pop tracks I’ve witnessed in the last 15 years. Fun On The Moon calls to mind Here Comes The Sun, but instead of the calm playfulness of ex-Beatle George Harrison, the Prekmurje guys and gal are of a more explosive kind. They launch melodic fragments into the stratosphere in the spirit of the aforementioned Smashing Pumpkins, and despite the repeating patterns, you’ll be craving more after you hear it. You get that in what follows, which breathes of Mark Lanegan and Screaming Trees, or R.E.M., Tom Waits and something else juicy.
The Boy In Me, The Girl In You is the record’s only duet, and sneaking into the home crew is none other than Scott McCloud, frontman of Girls Against Boys, who now pours his musical potency through the sieve of Paramount Styles. The song’s rhythm recalls a train ride, and with this dream express you travel far beyond sensual surface. Melee and Scott open up a patchwork of emotions for you, and in the imaginary of love, surrender, dissolving into otherness, and a narrative of crossing from the masculine to the feminine complementary principle of everything, you enter, completely unaware, the Japanese-sounding Killer Lesson. Conditionally speaking, I could announce here that you’re getting, in a quality way, the weakest song on the album, but this time it’s strategically placed in exactly the right spot, and you’ll survive this Zen moment of nothingness too. Satori, the fox-furred way, is an ominous moment of return to the original code of the past, and Werefox unfurl their lesson-dance of murderous precision and excellence in a Placebo way, because it was simply necessary, my dears. The only yardstick of creation on the record I Am Memory is, first and foremost, the one that belongs solely to the guys and the gal! Sexy explosions and simultaneous mental implosions keep lining up – with the song Give Me A Life. Think Pearl Jam and the acoustic moments of No Code, or the eclectic toying of the records Binaural and Yield, and somewhere in between sits the sonic DNA of Give Me A Life. Right after the call for a life comes the time for an explosive finale.
March Of The Finest is a stoner surprise, with hits of sound that lean on Psycho-Path patterns but with a Q.O.T.S.A. sense of melody. The record’s first video trump card is as uncompromising as the whole record is, in its own lovely way. Werefox reveal their darker, harder-hitting side, which makes clear that life and survival are written into this band’s basic code, so there’s no dilemma here! Beyond Mercy is a post-rock or post-punk dance synthesis that recalls the era ruled by bands like Joy Division. The less bright moment of the record is anything but an amateur reach for shortcuts or filler, but the particular release in Did I Kill The Devil In You? is welcome all the same. A stoner gem defends the shades of the more brutal end of the Werefox rainbow. Heart cranked up to the max is meant to wake the senses, and I completely melted at the layers of brutal guitar riffs that Bekko serves up like his life depended on it. The guitar is a brush that applies just the right doses of heart’s blood, and the whole track has just the right natural sine wave of build-up, so nothing about it sounds or fades out as superfluous or forced. And after this unbridled gem of a record comes the closing act with the song Urgency, which leads you with sensual minimalism into a smoky club where, exhausted from a pretty thrilling journey, you drop to the floor and, in the smoke of burning out, receive one last anointing, an initiation elixir that will make falling in love with Werefox standards something completely natural, self-evident and damn necessary for you!
No, it’s not an exaggeration to say that I Am Memory is the best thing to land on our shelves in the last few years. Even though the year has barely begun, I’ll go further and dare to say it’s actually one of the best records of this year, if not the best, setting a high bar for the competition. High standards are also what Werefox will now have to confidently meet in the future, because after the superb I Am Memory, that’s their ongoing creative commandment. The audience’s expectations will only climb, and I dare say this admittedly tough task is completely doable for the Prekmurje collective of gifted musicians! I hope to get confirmation of that faith soon, and to the band of musical rhapsodes Werefox I can whisper that they can sew a seventh, eighth and ninth tail onto their fox bodies! I Am Memory has met every expectation and revived faith in perfection in this old grump once again!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTDNEyQ3S5E
Lineup
Melee – vocals
Bekko – guitar, backing vocals
Manuel Hahn – bass guitar, backing vocals
David Halb – drums, percussion, backing vocals
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Scott McCloud – vocals on track no. 5
Production
Plueg & Werefox
Track list
- The Redneck Genious Story
- A Shitload Of Love
- Doghouse
- Fun On The Moon
- The Boy in Me, The Girl In You (feat. Scott McCloud)
- Killer Lesson
- Give Me A Life
- March Of The Finest
- Beyond Mercy
- Did I Kill The Devil In You?
- Urgency
